How do you quickly check if a network location exists using Delphi 5? [duplicate]

Question

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We need to write text to a file on our network, but there may be a situation where that location does not exist and we need to write to another location instead. How do you check quickly that a network location exists? Attempting to write text to a location that does not exist using a 'try...except' takes a whopping 30 seconds(ish). There must be a faster way, surely?

I'd be very grateful if someone could give me some pointers please.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For those of you interested in the answer for a Delphi context, I used the Indy component IdIcmpClient component to ping the IP, as follows:

  IdIcmpClient1.Host:= '10.0.0.999';
  try
    IdIcmpClient1.Ping();
  except
    showmessage('Not found');
  end;

You get a result in just over 3 seconds if it is not there, or almost instantly if it is.